2008-04-01 Backup

On my way home from work there blew a fierce wind. I was on my bike. There's always wind when I ride my bike. So what? Now here's the amazing part: For once it came from behind! I even managed to overtake a motor scooter. What a ride!

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Word of the day: Heisenbug. It's a bug that changes when you look at it. That happens when you rely of side effects of assert, for example. Wicked!

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When I couldn't find an ancient conversation in Google mail today, it freaked me out. How could these idiots throw away my email? It turned out it wasn't their fault. I kinda misplaced it. Nevertheless, it was the kick in my ass I needed to find out how to backup my emails. And here's what I came up with for Linux: mailutil transfer "{imap.gmail.com/ssl/user=yourname@googlemail.com/novalidate-cert}" googlemail_backup/ -v
mailutil downloads everything into the directory googlemail_backup in your home directory. The /novalidate-cert option is required because otherwise you need to install the certificate for the website, and I haven't got have a clue how that works. Oh, and you must enable IMAP in your Google mail account, of course. Replace yourname by... rataplan... your name, type the command into the command line and wait. I can't tell you how long it takes, because it's not done yet (it approximately two hours ago).
I'm not sure about this, but it might be a good idea to get rid of all labels first, or labeled mails will be downloaded twice (once in "All Mails" and once in "Labelname"). Most of my labels are triggered by filters, anyway, so restoring them isn't too difficult. I wish I wasn't so lazy!